Backpacking with dive gear

[DK_Scuba]

Have someone at home mail you a box of your kit. Ask the hostels if they will accept a box and have it sent there - do you dives -- mail it home in the same box. Rinse and repeat.


Its a risk, but carting around a cold water setup for six months seems like a version of hell that Dante hasnt thought of yet.

Yeah it really does sound like a cruel punishment lol. Looked into prices and looks like it'll be roughly $800 USD for each of our kits. Something to consider in the budget I suppose! Thanks

Don´t ship it to a South American country, there will be import taxes on it. Try to get in touch with Dive Shops in Argentina and Chile and may be you could rent dry suits of them for the trip

Great idea! This would be ideal as carrying the rest of our kit sounds doable until adding in the drysuit gear.

 

[GF99/99]

Hello everyone, my wife and I are planning to backpack South America for 6 months in the future and are really conflicted when it comes to our dive gear. We are planning to dive in Colombia, a liveaboard in Galapagos (Probably in August) and depending if we can save enough a dive trip to Antarctica. We are accomplished divers having 500+ and 200+ dives in cold water alone respectively.

Our question is how should be handle our dive gear? We will be requiring our drysuits for Antarctica but the idea of lugging around our full cold water kits for 6 months sounds risky (worried about theft and the overall bulk as we will be staying in hostels).

Does anyone have any ideas on how we can manage all of this?

Thanks!

Wow that's a difficult one. I was in a similar position I had plans to spend 2 months traveling Bolivia and Peru and then go to Mexico for a big cave diving trip but I opted to just travel Bolivia and Peru with just a small 25 liter backpack and a small personal size mini backpack and left the dive gear in the States. I can tell you that traveling like that was soooooo nice and trying to travel South America full cold weather diving equipment would be a nightmare. With in cities you will be walking around with your bags, transportation will be overnight buses and colectivos, or just hitchhiking, and if you do fly most of the smaller domestic flights do not include checked baggage, and if you go to the Amazon lots of small river boats and vans. Trust me having a full dive kit lugging that around just is not practical.

I just flew back to the States couple weeks ago picked up my drysuit, rebreather, etc and then back down to Mexico. Not practical to lug all that crap around.

If I was you I would seriously consider doing what others have suggested and do your diving portion first and the mail your stuff home or do the diving portion of your trip first then find a hotel/hostel that will let you store your diving equipment there (I am guessing most will let you but worst case off them a little money). Go travel and see everything then at the end of your trip get a cheep flight back to wherever you stored your gear and then fly back home from there.

What you should do is pack everything and I mean everything up as if you were going on your trip (dont just eye ball it literally pack every little thing you would take) to actually see how much stuff if would be and imaging lugging all that stuff around up a back ally cobble stone road trying to load it on top of a colectivo van. It is amazing how in your head packing diving gear does not seem so bad until you actually pack it and somehow the size and weight become 2x what you pictured in your head.

 

[profmason]

I have backpacked through columbia and ecuador with the scuba gear for a couple of months. Busses, trains, ferries etc. Also belize to mexico.

I carry a 55L pack (maximum carryon) and a 30L that can fit underseat(personal item). For south america it is open water non-tech diving.
55L gets the bpw, regs, fins, 5mm, mask, computers, dsmb etc. BPW is custom designed to be light weight (nylon plate, aluminum/nylon hardware) but I splurge on deep 6 eddy fins.
30L is all personal items for 2 months. Much easier to buy clothes and personal items then scuba gear while traveling.

For mexico the weight goes up, but the sidemount setup, sidemount regs, lights, reels all fit in the 55L. The helmet goes in the 30L. If I pull the 5mm out, I can fit the trilam drysuit into the 55L with the sidemount harness, fins, but have to dump the helmet and most of the clothes as regs, mask, computers go in the 30L. I have to wear the chuck taylors as my main shoes which is not my favorite for trekking.

The drysuit and rebreather have a pelican case (love the pelican air 1626 that either flies with me or goes DHL)

I know that my trips are going to be ~8 dives a week. (60 dives in 2 months) This makes it worth it to me to have my own gear that I can service. I think you should decide what kind of trip it is (Is it backpacking to different diving destinations) or backpacking with a bit of diving along the way.